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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 6382301" data-attributes="member: 2011">You don't think that humbling a PC by stomping him into the mud with no real chance of him winning isn't a bit humiliating? And shaming him into accepting the challenge in the first place isn't a bit humiliating? This is an overt display of DM power over player power. Do what I tell you to do, or watch the NPCs die.I think players want to have their PCs be heroes, not suckers. This encounter seems like one designed to shove a PC into the mud. The players are shamed into sending a champion out to fight.Option 1: Let the villagers die. Not very heroic.Option 2: Go out and fight the dude one on one, and lose and possibly kill a PC. Again, not very heroic.Option 3: Have the entire team go and fight 30 kobolds and lose and possibly have a TPK or partial TPK. Again, not very heroic.This encounter reminds me of DMs who have got to put a latrine into a dungeon and on top of that, let the players know that there is some treasure hidden down in the latrine. Sure, if one thinks about it carefully, latrines would exist in dungeons. But do we really have to roleplay that?Ditto with this. Yes, an evil guy might conceivably come up with a plan to challenge a PC to single hand to hand combat and threaten to kill some NPCs to force this. If he knew that there were PCs in the keep who gave a damn about that.But think carefully about this. How would the evil guy KNOW that anyone in the keep would actually be willing to risk their life over the lives of a few villagers? How did the half dragon know that there wasn't some mega-super retired fighter in the keep with 80 hit points who could come out and kick his butt? This is totally contrived.If the PCs are neutral and evil, they might even just laugh at the half dragon from the parapets and start taking pot shots at him with bows and could care less about the villagers.No, this is a contrived encounter designed to pull on the heart strings of players who are playing good aligned PCs where the entire purpose of it is to drop a PC into the mud and start up an emotional response so that a reoccurring villain is possible. Sorry, but I've seen better ways of doing this without the module designers showing off their big bad nearly impossible to kill monsters and their railroad attempts at forcing PCs to get the snot kicked out of them by said monsters.Kobayashi Maru scenarios are all fine and well in works of fiction because the author can pull whatever solution he wants out of his butt. When playing an RPG where the players have time invested in the PCs and the dice often do not cooperate, not so good. It's easy for this 20 points of breath weapon half dragon to kill a PC with only a few hit points remaining. That's just so ludicrous.DM: "Sorry that I killed your PC over an encounter that I practically forced you to do. I know you had no real choice in the matter and the other PCs couldn't really help. And the monster wasn't really supposed to kill anyone. Oops. Roll up a new PC."I just hope that the rest of this module isn't this much of a railroad. If so, I suspect that our group will do a lot of things that send it off its tracks.</blockquote>

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